Stranger Forces: A New Era Begins
by jei did it
Summary: The Collector takes a final stab at the acquiring the greatest artifacts before retiring. Rilo's kids, now five years older, wearily continue fighting the fight... with a new Ceques. And Jei can't write decent summaries. >:(
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** Yadda yadda yadda, Jada and her family are mine, the rest of the characters and the setting belong to Engle and Barnes.  
  
**Author's Note:** This story is set five or six years after Engle and Barnes apparently vanished from the face of the planet and the Strange Forces series trailed off. The Collector's gone corporate, the Ceques is at the end of its line, and a bunch of the good guys are out of the picture. Beware: This is a lot darker than the series was. Its original fans (including me) having all grown up, it's to be expected that our appetites are stronger. >:D And yes, I am aware of the full extent this title's cheesiness. Leave me alone, I'm bad at titles. =\  


  


**Stranger Forces: A New Era Begins**  
Jessica "Jei" Lee  
  
  
**Prologue**

  


  
The Collector stood before the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bulletproof window that took up one entire side of his office, clawed hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the myriad of lights twinkling from the urban landscape below.   
  
He had exchanged his safari gear for a closet consisting of expensive Italian suits, silk ties, and Gucci loafers, all specially tailored to fit his no-longer-quite-human form. It was time, the Collector had decided, for an upgrade in appearance. It was time to leave the tireless trudging through marsh and mire behind him and move up into the corporate world. He had kept his black pith helmet, however, and it sat now on the corner of his desk, a single note of sentimentality in an otherwise coldly impersonal and mechanically functional room.   
  
The reflection of the Werejaguar general behind him shifted slightly; the Collector's head tilted a hairsbreadth to the right, and the Werejaguar straightened immediately back into an uncomfortably stiff at-attention stance.   
  
Scaly lips curved just the tiniest bit upward before parting to allow a gravelly voice to emerge, rolling off a black tongue that showed the start of a fork at its tip. "Report."  
  
"We have acquired one of the Gauntlets, sir, and are currently working on locating the second. We have established that it is most likely in the western segment of the European continent and have dispatched a fully regimented unit to screen the area."  
  
The Collector stirred impatiently, though he kept his voice level. "And the Helm?"  
  
Hesitation. "We're still working on it, sir. It's only a matter of time."  
  
"Make sure that time is short, General. Dismissed."  
  
Even alone, the Collector did not relax. Soon. He could feel it deep inside him like a dark secret unfurled… it would happen soon. After years of toil and fruitless searching, years of dead ends and failed retrievals, he would finally be able to _complete_ his collection with the artifact of all artifacts, the greatest prize of all. Something he had long ago set out to find; the one thing whose loss had torn a chunk out of him and had left him, if only for a brief time, a broken man. His infantile dreams of capturing Chipekwe paled in comparison with the tangible reality of this acquisition. After all these years, he would finally have it.   
  
Soon.   
  
  



	2. Chapter 1: Beginnings

**Stranger Forces: A New Era Begins**  
Jessica "Jei" Lee  
  
  
**Chapter One : Beginnings**

  
  


Frank Dunk eyed his creation skeptically, and felt a flicker of doubt for the first time in a long while. Of course, he could not claim complete ownership of the contraption that lay before him and what was left of Rilo's strange force, but he _had_ played an integral part in its design and manufacture.   
  
The shattered remnants of the Ceques were suspended in a complex mesh of wires, springs, and circuits, surrounded by hammered copper bands and small chunks of clear quartz crystal. The whole thing formed a rough, lopsided sphere with a mismatched array of antennae sticking out from the top half. It was connected by a series of cables and wires to a massive computer system that was currently situated in the basement of Fairchild Manor.  
  
Although the seventeen-year-old genius would not admit it aloud, he was nervous. Over the years, the fragments of the Ceques had gotten less and less reliable, often spitting them out somewhere they had not wanted to go, or, more often, simply shutting down too soon or failing to activate at all. It had been six months since they'd last even _considered_ using the cursed artifact... Six months since that pivotal night in Canada, when everything had gone horribly wrong... Six months since the Ceques had rent David Donaldson to pieces in mid-leap, spraying the ground on both sides with blood and flinging the quivering gobbets of his body about like so much ruined meat.   
  
Once upon a time, Frank Dunk would have thrown up at the memory. Not anymore. He had changed-they all had. They had seen things so terrible that they could not sleep, for that was when the nightmares would reach them. Things that haunted them even in their waking hours, causing some of them to shiver and jump at every shadow. But that had been a while ago. They didn't have so many nightmares anymore.  
Shelly Miller was two years dead. They never had found Darren Donaldson. Hank Dunk was in a coma; the doctors did not know if he would ever wake. Michelle Boyd had finally cracked under the pressure, and now lived as a walking vegetable, leaving an empty, broken-down husk with dead eyes in her place.   
  
Frank himself had not escaped the past five years' trials unscathed. A faint, thin scar reached from his cheekbone to his forehead, bisecting his brow, his left eye clouded over and half blind. It was getting worse every day. He had constructed a sort of high-tech demi-pince-nez for it, wearing it at all times and keeping a backup model at home, just in case. With a few adjustments to the tiny levers and switches on the thick metal rim of the red, chemically treated disc of glass in front his eye, he could see clearer, farther, and in the dark, not to mention a handful of other options.   
  
What he saw now troubled him. He did not want to reactivate the Ceques, in whatever form. He did not want to let Rilo jump through it. No one did. But they all knew that they were running out of time, and with it, out of options. This might be their last chance. Rilo said it was worth the risk. Worse yet, Morgan agreed with him. Of course, Morgan had also insisted that he _make_ that risk, which was why he was tucked in a closet upstairs, unconscious and bound with duct tape, and not here in the basement with them.   
  
Frank tapped in the final command sequence, then hesitated, his finger hovering over the Enter key. "Are you absolutely certain that this is what you want?"  
  
Rilo looked not at him, but at the last few scraps of the Ceques, beads of sweat sliding down his scaly skin. No, actually, he was in fact absolutely certain this was not what he wanted. "Do it," he croaked. Because somebody had to.  
  
Keeping his face blank and his eyes cold, but swallowing hard, Frank Dunk did.  
  


***

  
  
Jada Kritiker woke up to the sound of an Instant Message popping up--_bing!-_-on her computer screen. She raised her head blearily, blinking the sleep from her eyes, and stared blankly at her monitor. She'd fallen asleep typing up one of her ongoing stories, she knew that much. The trouble was, she couldn't recall signing onto the Internet that night.   
  
So how could she receive a Message?   
  
Shrugging it off as yet another fluke of her perpetually dysfunctional memory, she jammed her glasses onto her face to read the IM. Radioactive green text on a black background, nothing unusual. It was the message itself that didn't make sense:  
  


The Rip Will Open At Two A.M. Be Ready.

  
  
Furthermore, the IM box didn't display the sender's screen name. For a moment, panic swamped her senses-had she been hacked? Had some pasty-faced, pimple-sporting computer geek bastard sent of one of those--what were they called? "time bombs"?--slithering insidiously into her precious hard drive? Her entire _life_ revolved around her computer: it housed countless writings, four years' worth of research, study, and evaluations, thousands of links to invaluable information sources, a more-than-worthy collection of connections. She'd poured the better part of a quarter of her life into that thing. If anything happened to it...  
  
She glanced to her digital clock--1:58. If she really _had_ received a time bomb, she didn't have much time to get rid of it. Where was that snazzy new anti-virus program? She'd been meaning to upload it onto her computer, but things had kept getting in the way, taking command of her attention and time. She rummaged through her drawers, through the heaps of _stuff_ on her desk. Not here, not here... 1:59. Where was it?! Downstairs? Of course! On the kitchen counter, by the door-her mother had wanted to use it for her computer at work.  
  
Jada leapt to her feet, sending her swivel chair spinning across the floor, and stampeded down the stairs. She launched herself at the counter, sweeping papers and books to the ground in her harried search for the all-important program disk. Another frantic glance at a clock-thirty seconds left.  
  
A thin, cheap CD case--Was this it? No, just a burned CD of her mum's, Simon and Garfunkel. She shoved a stack of envelopes aside, was about to move on when she caught a glimpse of a dull gold gleam, almost lost beneath the corner of a greeting card. Fifteen seconds. She snatched at that promising glint of color. Was it--? Yes! Bursting with triumphant relief, she turned too fast... a flash of the wall clock... tripped over a kitchen stool, stumbled... the long hand ticking onto the ten-second mark... lost hold of the disk... And watched helplessly as it slid from its flimsy paper-and-cellophane cover slip and skittered across the slick linoleum, under the stove.  
  
Five seconds.  
  
She dove to her knees, scrabbling for the disk, caught the edge with the tips of her fingers, coaxed it out, and shot upright--  
  
--just in time to see the glowing green digits of the micro-oven clock flicker and click: 2:00.  
  
Well, shit.  
  
Standing in her darkened kitchen, Jada could picture the voracious little virus bursting free from its digital bonds, crunching through her hard drive, devouring every scrap of useful information it uncovered. All her work… Years of searching, finding, utilizing, molding what she found and what she thought up into flawless sculptures of fantasy, imagination. Scraping together entire worlds, entire _universes_ out of _nothing_. Creating life from scratch. Those weren't just files she was losing-those were her tears, her sweat, her blood. Fragments of her soul. All gone, mindlessly destroyed by a chance encounter with a hacker she didn't even know.  
  
Overwhelming waves of jumbled emotions were on the verge of flooding her system when something-a sound, a feeling, a smell-distracted her.  
  
It was coming from the living room.  
  
She padded cautiously toward it. As her bare feet left cold tile for plush carpet, she felt the air around her change. In here, it was filled with a faint electrical charge, a charge that built with every passing moment, trembling along her skin, raising the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. Energy. _Power._ It was like nothing she had ever been exposed to before.  
  
_There was something hovering in the middle of the room. _  
  
A frigid, white, hissing thing, like a ball of static electricity sparked in the darkness. It was caught in suspended animation four feet from the floor, emitting the alien charge she felt so strongly. As Jada watched, it sputtered... and flashed... and grew. With a crackling roar, the little white spark of light and sound expanded vertically, tearing a hole in the air, a rip in the fabric of reality.   
  
An enormous pressure flattened Jada against the wall as she gawked in evident shock, fear, and fascination at the anomaly. A clamorous rushing sound filled her ears, like freakishly strong winds howling around her head, knocking framed pictures askew, toppling a potted plant in the corner. Just when she thought the sheer, monumental force of the thing would tear the room apart...  
  
_...something stepped through the rip. _  
  


***

  
  
Rilo Buru stood half in, half out of the portal, one foot firmly planted in the Manor, the other in what looked like a tidy little living room. The edges of the rip, constantly thrashing, crackling white flames, licked over his body, leaving flickers of cold rather than heat where they touched. It was not an unduly unpleasant sensation, but Rilo couldn't help but remember what had happened to the older Donaldson boy. Shaking his head and forcing the mental imagery from his mind, he pulled his concentration back to the task at hand.   
  
Time and countless battles had not been kind to the little Buru. Heavy white scars gouged their way along his right jaw line, a souvenir from the time when he'd narrowly avoided having a Mingwa knock his head clean from his shoulders. His left foot was just a little askew from when he had had bones broken and set badly. He was not as strong as he'd once been, not as agile, not as fast... His time was running out. He could feel it in his bones, a delicate chill dancing up his spine to wrap tightly around his heart. One day his luck would die, and he with it. Just as long as he could do this one last thing to ensure the kids' future success...  
  
And then he saw her, staring slack-jawed at him from the doorway, some kind of disc gripped in one hand. She didn't look like much: a short, dark-haired girl dressed in oversized penguin pajamas and looking about ready to wet her pants. Rilo couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. He thought the Host would be a little more... impressive.  
  
"C'mon," he said hoarsely, extending a heavily scarred arm, only too conscious that the wickedly curved claws at the end of it might make the gesture look more of a threat than an invitation. "Hop in. We don't have much time, I'll explain later." _Please, oh please, oh please let this girl think this is all just some fantastic dream and play along..._  
  
"...MOOOOOM! MOM, THERE'S A GIANT TALKING LIZARD IN THE HOUSE! MOOOOM!"  
  
Rilo winced, dog-like ears flattening against his head, and sputtered. "Lizard...?"  
  
"MOM! I'M SERIOUS! BRING THE SHOTGUN!"  
  
"Shotgun?! Oh, shit... Look, kid, I'm not gonna eat you. We need your help. I promise we won't hurt you, but you have to come with me _now_, or--"  
  
He was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of the cocking of a hammer. Rilo turned slowly toward the sound and found himself staring down the barrel of the biggest handgun he had ever seen, held in a teacup grip of a very grumpy-looking little Asian woman.   
  
"I couldn't find the shotgun. What the hell is going on here? Buru, what are you doing in my home?"  
  
Rilo heaved a sigh of mixed recognition and relief. "Mina. I had no idea this was your daughter. She's very important right now, and we need her help. I can't explain now-we have to go--"  
  
She lowered the gun. "You're in that much of a hurry?"  
  
"This thing could shut down at any second."  
  
"Mina, go play with the nice lizard man."  
  
The girl swiveled to gape at her mother, eyes as round as hard-boiled eggs. "What?! Are you _insane_? I am asking you, have you seriously lost your _mind_, woman?"  
  
"Do it for Mommy, hon. There are people who are counting on you."  
  
"Hey, look, just because YOU made a habit of saving the world doesn't mean I want to follow in your psychotic humanitarian footsteps!"  
  
The buru twitched, wriggling his fingers impatiently. "Hello? We're really on the clock, here."  
  
"Do it or I'm cutting off your allowance, Jada."  
  
"Mother!"  
  
"I mean it."  
  
"God, this _bites_." The girl stomped over to the rift and shot Rilo a vicious glare. "If my dad were home right now you'd be gecko meat."  
  
"Your father is a trigger-happy dork. Have a good time, Jada!" Mina watched, smiling beatifically, as the buru she had stumbled across one night in China yank her daughter through an untrustworthy interdimensional portal to places unknown, and shook her head wistfully. "Kids get to have all the fun these days."  
  
  
  



End file.
